A Harsh Winter
by GreenAppleAlice
Summary: After Scruple gets severely beaten up by bullies from his former wizard school while collecting firewood, Gargamel finds himself contemplating sending his apprentice back to his real parents, but realizes that Scruple, like Azrael, is part of his little makeshift family and that he doesn't want him to leave. Gargamel is a bit out of character FYI. Rated T for violence.
1. Chapter 1: Firewood

At the bank of a silver ribbon of a river, which wound its way through the snowy depths of the forest, Scruple was leaning against one of the barren trees next to a pile of firewood he'd collected as he tried to pick extra bits of loose maple bark off his blue knitted gloves, singing an old holiday song under his breath. The wind lifted his dark red cloak out behind him, and if it wasn't for the shock of bright red hair sticking out from under his hat, to any passerby the small wizard's apprentice might have just looked like another shadow in the midday cloudiness. Scruple didn't like the winter. At the coldest point of the year, his guardian, Gargamel, had become more ill-tempered than ever. Maybe it was the bad weather, maybe it was that the heavy snow made it more difficult to prowl around outside looking for Smurfs, or maybe it was some other reason altogether, but one thing was certain – the winter was a time to just be smart and stay out of Gargamel's way.

"_I've got half a mind to throw you out of this hovel of mine and back to the Wizard Academy so _they _can deal with you!_" Gargamel had shouted in frustration just the other day after Scruple had tripped over a fallen branch while walking, thus dropping the cage of Smurfs Gargamel had rounded up, letting them loose before they could be caught all over again. Scruple was well-aware that Gargamel didn't want him. While wizards taking on an apprentice was a common enough practice, Gargamel was a loner and Scruple himself had practically been kicked straight out of school. _No_ wizard wanted a charity case for an apprentice. The Wizard Academy prided itself on training students to be the best and most powerful in the world, and all of Scruple's former classmates revelled in that… in their blue robes and green pointed hats, they were known as a privileged few and each of them had more respect than any other student in the land by far. Scruple wanted desperately to be allowed back to school, but… but it was too late, and it was better to just suck it up and stay in Gargamel's good favour, because aside from the Wizard Academy, the only other option was to go home. Home was a dangerous place. If he were sent home, he'd be more subtle even signing his own _death certificate_.

As he picked up his bundle of firewood, silently stepping through the shimmering white snow, he wondered to himself what he could do if Gargamel would teach him some _truly_ powerful spells. He wouldn't need to be afraid of going home, then. Like magic had somewhat worked for his mother, Scruple's magical abilities might finally work in his favour… but that too was limited, the protection that magic could yield. When he shut his eyes, standing there amidst the empty white noise of the wind, he could remember…

_Everything at home was in its place, and as usual, there was a place for everything… except the kitchen was a mess… the salt had been tipped over. The chairs had been thrown across the room and the glass alchemy bottles had been shattered apart. That's what non-magic people do… they use whatever power they have otherwise._

He could remember being awake in the middle of the night when the thunderstorm had begun, and his mother in the room adjacent to his was waiting for his father to return home from work. His father was jealous, jealous for not having any magical powers of any sort. It was better to avoid him, generally.

As Scruple walked, trying to be quick about it so as not to face Gargamel's anger upon returning back to the hovel, the sound of icy laughter broke through the silence. Glancing up sharply, the firewood held out in his arms, it took a moment for him to realize that he'd wandered straight into the large clearing surrounded by a wide thicket of trees, a place where the students of the Wizard Academy spent their free time. Three of the boys from his former class were staring straight at him, smirks of thinly-veiled loathing plastered on their faces. Scruple recognized the first three, Giles, Mort and Hendrik... but behind them was an older student, a student he didn't recognize with shaggy hair, a sallow complexion and fixed brown eyes, who was pointing his wand at squirrels and rabbits and muttering incantations to set the ground beneath them alight with small sparks. _Just don't look at them, keep walking and they'll ignore you, _Scruple told himself, keeping his head bowed down passively, but it was too late. They'd already spotted him. He kept averting his eyes to the snowy ground as he walked, but then he felt somebody push past him, felt the presence of the small crowd around him closing in like the same clustered trees that sheltered the clearing from the eyes of anybody who might happen to walk by. Scruple froze, keeping his arms wrapped around the firewood. He didn't like this, not at all. He felt his heart beat once, twice, the sole representation of familiarity in the sinister shadows of the forest.

"Well, well, if it isn't Scruple the screw-up," said Hendrik in a haughty voice, glaring down through the frames of his glasses at his former classmate. "So, is being an apprentice all it's cracked up to be? I see Gargamel's still got you hired as his live-in maid service." Scruple took a step backwards, trying to look like he was just in a casual hurry.

A lower, darker voice interrupted, and Scruple jumped, startled to find that the older student had crept up behind him and was now towering over him with a distinct look of malice. "Don't you think he's a little too young to be an apprentice?" he sneered through gritted teeth, shaking his head with a stone-cold chuckle of laughter. "Hey kid, did you ever hear about what happens to dropouts like you who go looking for trouble?" A sleazy grin stretched across the older student's face, brown eyes gleaming as he loomed forward.

Giles shrugged his shoulders from where he was standing, running a hand awkwardly through his blonde hair. "C'mon Malachi, leave that loser alone," he muttered, his eyes wide as if he were anticipating something to arrive at any minute. He cast a sheepish, almost pitying look Scruple's way, but this quickly slipped back into a cruel smile when Malachi turned around to reply.

"I've got to get back to school soon," Mort added, his wand gripped tightly in his pudgy hand. "They're starting the lesson on transfiguration today, and…"

"Shut up, you idiot," snapped Malachi in a startlingly vicious manner, making Scruple flinch in surprise. "…Mort's my brother, and I hear before you got thrown out of school, you used to play tricks on him. I'll bet you thought you were a real laugh riot back then, didn't you, kid?"

Scruple remained silent, looking tiny compared to the other four students with their threatening stares. He quietly tried to think of some way out of the situation. _What was it that Mother used to do when Father would come home and chase her down in the field behind the house? How far would she run before he caught up with her? _"Leave me alone," he finally told Malachi in a small voice, daring to meet the older boy's gaze with a look of defiance, unwilling to play by the rules of their game. "I'm not even doing anything to you."

This only seemed to set Malachi off even more than the silence did. "_What_ did you just say, you little _creep_?" he exclaimed, shoving Scruple against the nearest tree, holding him off the ground. "I don't give a damn what you were or weren't doing out here! Nobody wants a _failure_ like you hanging around this neck of the woods!" From nearby Hendrik laughed again, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his pointy nose, and Giles lingered behind the group with a strange, worried look in his eyes…

…And Scruple finally decided to run, knowing he had to be quick, quicker than the wind or the rushing water of the nearby river if he wanted to get away before they had time to catch up with him. He could already hear Malachi cursing and swearing, the older student's footsteps plundering after him through the snow, and he wasn't so sure he could outrun the small crowd at all, not when there was no real place to hide and _definitely_ not when he was stuck carrying the huge bundle of firewood with him. If he wasn't so worried about what Gargamel would say if he returned without it, he'd just drop the wood altogether, but he wasn't going to take that chance. He was smaller than them too, and he couldn't run as fast as them. He could already hear Hendrik and Giles catching up to Malachi with scattered insults and more cold, shallow laughter, Mort plodding along behind them.

_Mother used to scare Father off with her magic… maybe I could do that someday. She could shut the cellar door from across the room just by _looking_ at it. She might have shoved Father away or knocked the feet out from beneath him just by looking at him, that's probably what drove him mad that last time… too bad she hadn't thought to throw him into the wall as fast as she could run... he'd have learned his lesson then._

As he swiftly stepped in behind a large boulder, leaning against the icy surface, he noticed how white the ground was and how the wind was starting up again, snow flying everywhere. He couldn't believe it, but he was seriously wishing that he could be back at Gargamel's hovel with the fireplace burning brightly and the candlelight washing away the memories of his past. _Maybe they'll get tired of chasing me and they'll go back to school. That weasel Hendrik would _never_ be late for class, not when he's always sucking up to the professors. They have to get bored eventually… don't they? …Father never got bored, though… he only got mad, even when Mother would try to drive him out… _Scruple could vaguely remember how his mother had tried to drive his father away from the house a long time ago, shattering the kitchen windows, the ivy trellis in the garden shuddering before bursting into arteries of fire that licked their way up the wall in golden curls, the painted iron gate smoking, bubbling and glowing with fire… fire consuming the neighbour's hay bales like carnivorous lizards. She'd brewed potions and summoned all the power she had for these acts, one last shot at protection. "_Someday when you go to school, you'll learn how to do this on your own," _she'd told him with a loving smile as he'd watched her creating these beautiful little pieces of evil. Since then he'd often wondered whether it was wrong or not to use evil for good purposes. It was a question which he wasn't sure anybody could answer for him. He'd asked his mother once, just a few days prior to her death, leaning over the table to watch as she whispered sacred passages from the old crackling leather and parchment of her spellbooks, throwing together minerals and strange foreign herbs and powders she'd purchased from faraway places. "_Bless your dear little heart, Scruple… I can't answer that question, but black and white, natural and supernatural, good and evil, it's not so straightforward… some people who can appear very good are not actually good… and some people who appear very evil are not actually evil. You'll understand that someday," _she had explained patiently. He still didn't understand, though.

Suddenly the sound of footsteps were stomping closer and closer in the thick snow, and Malachi's wild laughter tore through the air, mangled with the winter wind. Scruple curled up next to the boulder, trying to make himself as small as possible, shutting his eyes and wishing himself totally invisible as the snow clung to his damp red hair…

He already knew what was going to happen. He knew better than to trust that the world was safe. It was easier to just hold onto the firewood as four crooked shadows lingered over him, approaching like a pack of wolves. He felt a cold chill freeze his heart when he heard Malachi's insidious, dry laughter directly above him, but he had no time to think of how to get away from him. Malachi was choking him, his hands wrapped tightly around his throat until the surroundings of the forest looked as if they were all melting away, leaving behind a stark black canvas of nothing.

He couldn't remember how long it had been or what time of day it was, but after a while, breathing had gotten difficult and the snow had been stained red with blood. He could remember how the snow had been shining white earlier, but now it was just red, red like the wine his father never seemed to stop drinking, red like his mother's blood that had seeped down from under the doorframe…

"Nice punch, Hendrik! I figured you wouldn't chicken out," Malachi's voice rang out, but it sounded foggy and distorted.

Hendrik's gaze wavered as he looked away thoughtfully, his hand still clenched into a fist. "I… Malachi, I think we've gone far enough now…"

"What, are you afraid ol' Mordor's going to come down from the Academy and give you a slap on the wrist? He doesn't like this little dropout any more than we do," Malachi interrupted, dragging Scruple forward by the collar of his cloak as he slammed punches into the smaller kid's chest, eyes, and stomach. "I'm not letting him get away with what he did…"

"He really… really didn't do a whole lot," Giles piped up, his voice husky with the sound of hoarse sobbing, which he was ineffectively trying to stifle. "Scruple never hurt us, Malachi… he never hurt anyone. We're going to get kicked out of school if we get caught! What if he tells Gargamel?"

"That washed-up old coot of a wizard?" cackled Malachi, groaning in disbelief before throwing another punch to Scruple's eye. "My old man says Mordor just bribed Gargamel to take in an apprentice, you know, so the school wouldn't get a bad rep… don't know why he bothered, I mean, Scruple the screw-up here is just some poor orphan boy. Nobody would care one way or the other if they kicked him out of school or if he died, not even _Gargamel_ would care."

Mort was shaking profusely, looking like he was going to be sick. His older brother was a loose cannon, a troubled thug of a teenager who was failing his own apprenticeship to a necromancer working under King Gerard. Mort had known that Malachi would be frustrated by the notion of a younger kid, especially a dropout, getting an apprenticeship before him… he'd _known_, and still he'd purposely egged him on to beat up Scruple, all over a few harmless jokes from school. It was Mort's fault. Even if none of them were ever caught, even if Scruple decided not to rat on them, it would _still _be his fault. Mort had known his brother's violent behaviour for a long time.

"Well, aren't you going to fight back, screw-up?" Malachi drawled, letting Scruple fall back into the snow with a soft thud, only to kick him abruptly. Scruple just lay there without any response, letting the cascade of snow drift over him from the wind. He didn't have the strength to get up and fight back, no longer breathing, just panting and choking between the waves of pain. He felt like he was being stabbed violently with shards of glass. Hendrik had broken several of his ribs, and he could only see out of one eye.

_Trenches of fire raced across the grass through the field when Mother was killed… the windmill tipped over and the clouds in the sky went green and jagged and Father knocked the front door down… _

He just wanted to sleep, to stay out there in the snow and go to sleep after it was all over. It would be easier than trying to explain to Gargamel why he was so late returning with the firewood… _I'm a failure, and he'll tell me the same thing when I bring the firewood home… except that's not really my home. I don't _have_ a home_. He could faintly hear noises, the sound of Hendrik crying, the sound of Giles's footsteps leaving in a horrified hurry as he headed back to school, but mostly just the brisk, familiar old sound of the wind. He tried to focus more on that than on the current situation as Malachi dug a clenched fist into his stomach, pressing up under his rib cage until he could feel the whole world disappearing around him. He tried to remember the lyrics to the song he'd been singing while chopping the firewood earlier, some simple piece of reality to hold onto. He'd learned the song years ago when holiday carollers had passed by his house one night. On the verge of blacking out, he tried to remember other things, his first home, his family's names, as his desperate attempts to breathe against the relentless suffocation brought only choked gasps and shallow wheezing. Malachi had him held to the edge of the boulder, pressing his lungs flat inside his chest. He felt delusional with pain, unable to breathe, the constriction around his chest compressing his lungs together and collapsing his ribs until all he could do was pant raggedly and keep trying to distract himself with pointless memories. By the time Malachi had dropped him back to the ground again, he was sure he was dead.

"You didn't hurt him _that_ badly, did you, Malachi?" Mort questioned reluctantly, his words awash with guilt. "C'mon Scruple, get up… we're even now, right?"

Malachi gripped his younger brother's hands with clenched fists, a stern and menacing coldness flashing across his face. "It doesn't matter, Mort… nobody's ever going to find out about this, do you understand? That means you'd better keep your big mouth shut and not tell the professors about this… and the same goes for you, Hendrik." Hendrik only wiped his nose on his sleeve as he tried to control his crying, crouched down on the ground with his wand still clutched in his hand.

Mort pulled away from Malachi, kneeling down in the snow and dragging Scruple upright, shaking him back and forth by his thin shoulders to try and wake him up. "I didn't mean it, not like this," he insisted, but it was too late to take it back. Disgusted with himself, Mort turned around to face Hendrik. "They'll tar and feather us when they find out what we did," he pointed out simply, but Hendrik said nothing back.

"I already told you, they're never _going_ to find out," Malachi repeated, annoyed. "Even if they did, what do you really think anybody will do, throw us in the dungeon over a little hazing?"

"This wasn't hazing!" exclaimed Mort in disbelief. "We'll get expelled if anybody finds out, and I just thought you'd play a stupid prank on him, not this… Scruple, I really didn't mean it, you've got to believe me, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it... Malachi, he's bleeding everywhere, we're going to be in _so_ much trouble!"

With a tiny whimper of pain, Scruple tried to push Mort away, but he could barely move anymore. His struggling was quite weak. Malachi had damaged some internal organs. "Get away from me," he tried to say, but all he was able to do was whisper a soft plea to be let free before falling back against the boulder with a shallow cough. Unable to speak or move, he simply stayed still and listened, waiting for some sign that they were leaving. He almost halfway wanted Gargamel to come looking for him, because at least then he'd be able to explain his lateness, and the old wizard might not send him away. It was dangerous to be sent away.

The portion of Mort's blue cloak that Scruple had been staring at suddenly seemed to darken, as if cast in shadow, and Mort himself was sweating despite the weather... and then, without warning, the cloak caught fire, small flames licking up the sides of the fabric. Scruple watched in a daze, the firelight reflecting in his one uninjured eye. _One day I could tear this whole world apart with fire... if I wanted to_, he thought to himself in one bitter moment of revenge... but he _didn't _want to. He didn't want to hurt anybody. Anything like that would bring him one step closer to becoming his father.

Mort yelped and tore his cloak off, tossing it haphazardly in the cold snow and stomping up and down on it to extinguish the flames. "...I must've left a pack of matches in my pocket," he suggested to his two confused friends. They'd never catch on that Scruple had done it himself.

"Let's get out of here already," said Malachi, grabbing Mort's arm and pulling him to his feet. "If we're too late getting back, somebody will start suspecting something." With a sideways glance at Hendrik, he added, "you too, you geeky beanpole."

_White fog drifted across the empty field in the early morning, and the bright autumn sun cast crazy arcs of rainbow across the charred black streams where the fires had been. It hadn't been enough to stop Father… even magic isn't enough to stop violence, unless you're already violent yourself._

When he was certain they were gone, Scruple shakily stood, but he fell back to the ground quicker than he could gather the firewood. He'd lost too much blood and it was making him dizzy. He didn't stand up again yet. He just curled up in the snow where he'd fallen and cried. The early afternoon sun above, blanketed by the clouds, looked like a tarnished silver coin high up in the sky… _afternoon… I was supposed to bring the firewood back _hours_ ago. Gargamel's going to throw me out, and I'll get sent back to Father, wherever he is… NO, if that happens, I'll run away, I'll go somewhere else altogether._

Holly and Crainte, those were the names of his mother and father, he recalled, but he couldn't remember their surname, and likewise he didn't know his own.

_The field, October, the frost was silvery-white, but the fire-marks were still there… there were horses and chickens, but they belonged to the neighbors… why does it seem like such a long time ago? It wasn't, not really, anyway._

He missed this strange, surreal place for what it was worth. Even if it was where his mother had been killed, he missed the smell of the tall green grass swaying in the breeze, the warm sunlight draping his small little home in gold, the faraway enigma of magnificent stone castles and cathedrals off at the edge of the horizon, fixtures of big cities he'd hoped one day maybe to visit. He was very lonely in his apprenticeship, but he had run out of options. _I have to accept it... appreciate what I have right now... because what I have right now is all I've got... and probably all that I'll ever _have_._

Weakly he rose to his feet again, slowly gathering up the maple firewood logs one by one. They seemed so much heavier than he'd remembered, but he only held onto them more carefully than usual, determined to bring them back like he was supposed to. _Maybe if I'm lucky... maybe Gargamel won't throw me out, if I can bring these logs back to him before sundown... I just want to go to sleep and never wake up..._

He was certain that Gargamel would see his lateness as the perfect excuse to disavow his apprenticeship and get rid of him.


	2. Chapter 2: Family

Deep in the forest, a heavy blanket of crisp white snow had settled across the land. It sparkled in the dim light of the cloudy gray sky as if the ground were paved with diamonds, and most people would find it a truly beautiful and captivating sight – but for Gargamel, who was pacing back and forth in his hovel with stiff footsteps from the cold, he wasn't happy in the least. If anything, he was dreaming up a way to be rid of his incompetent little red-haired apprentice, Scruple, who'd been sent out to collect firewood over three hours earlier. The boy hadn't yet returned, leaving Gargamel's stone hovel without any source of heating for the fireplace whatsoever. His cat, Azrael, was curled up on the carpet with his fur puffed up, an ineffectual attempt to avoid the bitter winter chill. The air inside the place was so dry that it felt like living in a block of ice.

Tired of waiting, Gargamel filled his tarnished old kettle with water so he could make tea whenever he finally got the firewood he'd asked for. He was really beginning to regret taking Scruple in under his roof, especially since the incentive to keep him there had long since passed after the kid had failed his re-entrance exam to the Wizard Academy. Cursing under his breath, the old wizard sank into his chair with Azrael nestled at his feet, thinking about the situation with disdain. The Academy had flat-out refused to take Scruple back in spite of him never having been formally kicked out of his enrolment, and no family had ever come to claim guardianship, so Gargamel had been saddled with him indefinitely. "I'll bet he's out there trying to collect lizards again instead of doing his work like he's supposed to," Gargamel muttered to Azrael, who only made a loud meowing noise in vague agreement.

Just as Gargamel had begun to drift off to sleep, the door creaked open and in trudged Scruple, carrying a load of firewood in his arms. Gargamel didn't get a good look at him, but he winced visibly as his apprentice dropped the wood onto the floor with a heavy thud rather than carefully setting it down. "It's about time, Scruple! It's gotten cold enough to build an _igloo_ in here while you've been out there doing who-knows-what! Why, I ought to…?" Gargamel trailed off suddenly, his words hushed, his eyes wide in surprise as Scruple turned to face him. "…Scruple, what on earth happened?"

Scruple was standing there looking exhausted, dreadfully pallid as he leaned against the nearby table to steady himself, appearing as though he'd been run over by something. He had one bruised eye covered partially by his hand, hidden in the hopes that Gargamel wouldn't notice. Blood was dripping down his forehead from beneath his feathered red bangs, and his clothes were flecked with heavy spots of blood and melted snow. Forcing a sarcastic smile, Scruple replied, "You'll _never_ believe the price of firewood these days, Gargy."

Gargamel wasn't sure what to say. It wasn't the first time his apprentice had returned from somewhere looking visibly shaken up, but this time things were much more severe. On the one hand Gargamel's first instinct was to tell him off, still annoyed by the length of time it had taken for the firewood, so that's what he blurted out on impulse. "If you want to kill yourself hunting for lizards you little fool, do it on your _own_ time," he spat coldly, crossing his arms. He expected his apprentice to retort with some silly made-up excuse, but Scruple didn't say anything back. He just looked horribly frightened, startled by every shadow on the wall and cobweb in the corner. Gargamel was considering punishing him for his lateness, but some stronger feeling had washed over him and before he even knew what he was doing, he'd risen to his feet, a concerned look in his dark eyes. _Scruple's just a kid, and I'm supposed to be his guardian, aren't I? _Maybe it was that Gargamel _himself_ could remember being a kid once. Maybe it was some other reason entirely, but walking up to Scruple, he couldn't help but feel a rush of deep worry as he gazed into his apprentice's eyes and saw only vacant listlessness. "Scruple, answer me! What happened to you?"

"I ran into some guys from the Academy," said Scruple in a somewhat slurred tone of voice, shivering from the cold, leaning forward a bit towards the floor in a daze. "Apparently they don't want 'failures' in their part of town anymore." He looked like he was about to say something else, a snide or witty remark no doubt, but he only coughed shallowly, and Gargamel froze in shock when he realized that Scruple was coughing up blood. Even Azrael had noticed, and was glancing rapidly around the hovel to make sure that whatever had hurt Scruple hadn't followed him home to keep on paying it forward. The cat's yellow eyes were filled with terror, but finally after realizing that the threat wasn't a nearby thing, Azrael settled back onto the carpet to sleep.

Gargamel was at a loss for words. "Scruple, I…"

"It's no big deal, it was just a game with them and they went too far," Scruple interrupted, but he looked terrible. It was the kind of thing that normally would have made Gargamel annoyed and disappointed, a distraction from his daily attempts to plot another sinister scheme to locate the Smurf Village, but instead to Gargamel's puzzlement, he felt nothing but a surge of empathy and compassion for his little apprentice, who was trembling like a leaf in the wind from the frigid air in the hovel. _Poor little twerp, _he told himself, wondering how a bunch of schoolchildren could be so violent and cruel. It seemed so long ago, so far away, Gargamel's own school days, but he too could remember the daily ridicule, the teasing and the way his own classmates at the Wizard Academy would beat him up in the trees behind the drawbridge after class. As he stood there awkwardly, cringing at the knowledge that his evil demeanor was being washed away by pity, he tried to lead Scruple away from the table. Scruple only flinched upon seeing Gargamel's raised hand, backing away until he'd pressed himself up against the stone walls of the hovel. Shuddering in pain, he held his hands over his eyes, repeating something over and over again in a quiet, desperate voice which the older wizard couldn't quite make out. "Scruple, calm down," Gargamel insisted, trying to hear what his apprentice was saying. "You're not making any sense."

"I'm sorry," Scruple repeated, on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry... please don't hate me, I'm sorry, I... I didn't mean to be late..."

_I told him before he left this morning that I'd throw him out of the house if he was late again bringing the firewood back,_ Gargamel recalled, and he was sure that at the time, he'd seriously meant those words. _He's afraid of me_. He tried to think of something he could say to take it back, but when he looked up, he realized that Scruple had fainted and was lying there sprawled out on the floor stiffly. Worried, Azrael timidly stepped up to him, leaning against Scruple's hand and expecting the boy to reach out to stroke his fur the way he usually did. With a questioning gaze at Gargamel, the cat let out a small meow but didn't move away.

Dropping to his knees, for one panicked second Gargamel had thought that his apprentice was dead. He had never really thought that he'd care if such a thing happened; they'd both come close to peril on many occasions and he'd never really cared then... but he and Scruple had always made it out of every situation alive. Gargamel had never had anyone close to him die before... _Close to me!? _he immediately corrected himself with a repulsed gag. _Scruple's just some dropout kid who I got stuck with. Why should I care what happens to him?_ In spite of himself though, no matter how many times he repeated it in his head, it didn't stop him from trying to help. As he held his apprentice slightly upright off the floor to look at the extent of his injuries, he was horrified to find that Scruple's heartbeat was faltering with a weak pulse, his chest rising and falling with struggling breaths, his ribs broken and his head bleeding, and it was a maddening sort of downward chaos. Gargamel had rarely felt sorry for _anyone_ before, and he didn't like it at all. _It's like drowning in_ _pity_, he halfheartedly thought to himself, and the reoccurring thought on his mind was, _how could anybody do this? _– but then he remembered that he'd had a lot of broken bones during his _own_ childhood, too. It was supposedly all in the name of fun, bullying the easiest target. Gargamel was supposed to be evil, a powerful wizard who would one day have the secret to making pure gold, but at the moment he was haunted by his own lousy life. Gently carrying Scruple in his arms, Gargamel held back his own emotion regarding his terrible memories of the past. Scruple was just twelve years old, about the same age that Gargamel himself had started getting picked on in school, and it seemed in some cruel fate that history was doomed to repeat itself. There was always a kid destined to be mocked and bullied, regardless of the reason… and that never changed... but nobody had ever helped Gargamel in the past. His mother was quick to tell him that the world's most powerful wizards could fight off fire-breathing dragons and vengeful giants and even _demons_, let alone a few boys looking for a fight. His godfather had only belittled and teased him. "_That's what happens when you let people walk all over you, my good-for-nothing godson!_" he'd laughed hideously. Nobody had done anything. At night, hidden beneath the blankets of his bed, Gargamel had wished over and over again for things to be different, or sometimes on the worst of days, he'd wish to just be dead. Even then, nobody had helped him. He had vowed to show everybody one day how powerful a wizard he could be, but nobody had ever taken him seriously.

Smoothing back Scruple's red hair and holding the shivering child silently, Gargamel couldn't believe that he was actually missing his apprentice's snarky humour. Scruple was always playing games with Azrael and trying his best to perform the magic spells he'd been taught from school, hoping he'd be accepted back there. Now he just looked like a broken toy that somebody had thrown away in the street, pale and shaking. As the sky outside darkened to a turquoise dusk, the black silhouettes of the trees outside spooky and strange, Gargamel carefully set Scruple down in bed, spreading a blanket over him to keep him warm. "...Scruple, I'm so sorry," he sighed. "I'll fix you up and everything's going to be fine, you'll see."

After lighting the fireplace, inhaling the nostalgic smell of burning maple logs as they heated the tea kettle, he pulled up a chair next to the bed where he'd left Scruple lying, carefully cleaning the blood away from the boy's face with a damp dishcloth. He'd done the same thing years ago to himself in the mirror after one particularly nasty beatdown from an older student, who'd taunted him relentlessly with the nickname "Garlic-smell" before punching him in the face a few times. Years of that turned into a whole decade, and with every bruise and black eye and broken tooth, he'd slowly lost a little bit more of any kindness he'd had within him when he was a child. Azrael had been his only true friend (and definitely a good and loyal one at that), but still he'd grown up to be the weird ugly loser with no job, a mangy cat and an obsession with hunting down little blue people in the forest, while his tormentors now lived in luxury as esteemed court magicians, having private rooms in elegant castles and all the respect anybody could ever ask for. When Gargamel gazed down at Scruple lying there, his eye darkly ringed with a large bruise, his breathing laboured and shallow due to the broken ribs he'd been left with, the older wizard could also see _himself_… and it was _agonizing_. No longer caring whether Scruple or Azrael could see him or not, he broke down in distraught, heavy sobbing, burying his face in his hands to muffle the sound so he wouldn't wake anybody up. He didn't have much to worry about; Azrael was an old cat who could sleep through everything from a lightning strike to an earthquake, and Scruple was unconscious.

It wasn't even the material possessions and wealth Gargamel envied of his former classmates so much as the respect and power they had. They had treated somebody else like dirt and yet somehow had also grown up to be model citizens in the eyes of people the world over. Their memories of bullying Gargamel were long forgotten, only brought up perhaps at times where they needed a good punchline or anecdote about "that one little senile peasant" to share laughingly with their friends at lavish parties and gilded dining halls. Worse still, Gargamel's own family thought he was a loser. His fat old godfather abused him and made no effort to hide his disregard, and his mother wanted him to be something he could never become. _Is that what Scruple's fate is? _Gargamel wondered as he clumsily bandaged up the worst of his apprentice's injuries, wrapping cloth around Scruple's ribs to cover the dark bruises left by the gang of Academy students._ Well, that explains why he was coughing blood, they beat him up very badly... he's so tiny. It's no wonder they were able to do this so easily, he's just a child and... and I should've gone with him today instead of sending him out there all by himself. Those students could have _killed_ him, and it looks like they came really close to that... I suppose I'll have to notify his family, as well. His family never even came to _see_ him yet, and he's been here with me for almost a year. Maybe they still think he's at school or something._

Setting the tea kettle on the table, he dug through the cupboards and shoved aside empty canisters of spices and old boxes of baking supplies (which had probably expired, anyway) until he found his single can of cheap black tea leaves, and already his dusty old hovel was starting to feel more like a real home. He wasn't entirely sure what a real home was supposed to be – he'd always heard the saying that a real home wasn't a giant home, or a home full of belongings, but instead a real home was whichever place the people you loved were. It didn't necessarily matter in any case, but time and time again he'd seen those Smurfs so happy-go-lucky and caring for one another in an overly saccharine, nauseating way, and they never seemed to need wealth or power to be happy. Gargamel had his cat and his apprentice, and he suspected that neither one of them really cared much about him one way or the other. _And do I care about them, either? I mean, Scruple was dumped on me and I certainly don't hate him or anything, but still… he's inconvenient… he's a hard worker but him being here with me is inconvenient. I can't really blame him, I suppose. He didn't have any choice_… _this is no place for a child, though. He's injured right now and I can't even get a doctor for him because I can't afford it. Maybe I should think about sending him back to his family where he belongs, if I can locate them. It would be easier for me, not having an apprentice tagging along all the_ _time._ Still, as he sipped his tea, he couldn't shake the odd feeling that if he ever got rid of Scruple, he'd regret it later. It was nice, he had to concede, being able to have a conversation with somebody even if Scruple really wasn't particularly interested in Gargamel's nefarious plans for capturing Smurfs. Scruple at least understood and believed him about his plans, and he was just about the only person who really did. _His family could probably pay for a doctor for him, if they can afford to send him to the Academy, anyway... it's the right thing to do. I'll have to notify them._

It was nearly midnight, the hovel illuminated only by the warmth of yellow candlelight, when Scruple finally regained consciousness. Lifting his head weakly, he saw that Gargamel was sitting beside the bed bundled in his black attire, Azrael resting nearby atop the table to enjoy the heat of the steam rising from the kettle. "…You're going to be alright," said the older wizard reassuringly, brushing back Scruple's hair and gently placing a hand on his forehead. With a small joking chuckle he added, "Needless to say it's going to be a couple of weeks before you can go Smurf-hunting with me again, though. Those ex-classmates of yours really did a number on you, but it's over... don't be afraid, you're safe now." Letting Scruple rest his head against his shoulder, Gargamel held out a cup of tea for him with a thin smile.

This behaviour only seemed to bother Scruple, who was eyeing him nervously, his hands shaking so badly that he nearly dropped the cup. "You… You're not angry with me about the firewood?" he asked in surprise. "I was late..."

Gargamel shrugged his shoulders. "I imagine punctuality wasn't what was on your mind at the time, and that's not your fault, Scruple… here, you'd better lie back down and try to get some rest. You're not in any trouble with me, so don't worry. Just try to sleep."

"Aren't I supposed to do the dishes and sweep the floor like you usually get me to do?" Scruple questioned, wincing visibly as he tried to stand, sharp pain dragging him backwards. He didn't want to risk the chance that Gargamel might think he was just being lazy, and he feared Gargamel's sudden rush of kindness was just a trick being played on him.

"I already took care of your chores for you," Gargamel told him, easing his apprentice back down carefully so he wouldn't fall over. As Scruple went slack in his arms, exhaustedly struggling to breathe with his face buried against Gargamel's shoulder, the older wizard, trying to keep up his cold reputation, added, "in the state you're in, you'd probably drop and break all my dishes, anyway. Just lie still and try not to knock anything over... everything's going to be alright."

Scruple obeyed, lying his head back against the warm flannel sheets of the bed, nestled into the blanket, but still he had an oddly forlorn look in his eyes as he stared up at the rafters on the ceiling, a knowing expression on his face. "…You never wanted me, did you? So, why are you doing this?"

The sudden out-of-the-blue question startled Gargamel, who turned to say something quickly but found himself falling silent. It was true, he'd never exactly been subtle about his annoyance at having Scruple around. He'd stated on many occasions that he was more than willing to kick Scruple out of his hovel. Gargamel wasn't used to having other people in his house, nor could he necessarily afford the cost of an apprentice. Still, he was shocked to find that a strange feeling was overtaking him as he took notice of Scruple's disconsolate, lonely expression. _Guilt... I can't believe I actually feel _guilty_ over this. Why should I feel guilty? Scruple's not my child, and it isn't as if I'd actually just abandon him in the street... I'd send him back to the Academy, or back to his own family... he's not _my_ family. His real family can look after him, I don't have the time or the patience anymore and he's a little nuisance... but I love him, anyway... damn it, what am I _saying_!?  
_

"It's fine if you don't want me, really, you can tell me," said Scruple with striking nonchalance, biting back the pain from his broken ribs as he lay there. "_Nobody_ wants me. Those stuck-up guys from the Wizard Academy are right… I _am_ a failure. I break all the rules, I get into trouble and it's too late to take it back now… it's too late to be someone else. Professor Mordor told me that, too… he just wanted me out of his hair, so he bribed you to take me on as your apprentice. He knew I could never be a _real_ magician, and he never wanted me at his school in the first place. I mean, you don't think my father seriously ever would have paid _money_ for me to learn magic, do you? I'm Mordor's charity case and everybody knows it."

"Your _family_ must want you," Gargamel suggested bluntly, although he immediately wished he had delivered that statement a bit differently. Standing up slowly, he picked up both empty cups of tea to set them beside the washbasin for later. "Actually, I need to notify them about what happened to you, so you'll have to tell me where they are. Do they live far from here?"

"What do you need to contact _them_ for?" asked Scruple, confused. "...It's not worth it, Gargy. You'll have a lot of trouble finding them, believe me."

Hesitating for a moment, not wanting to frighten him, Gargamel responded solemnly, "You've been badly hurt... I don't think you understand _how_ badly, but... but you could die if I don't find someone to help you, and I can't afford a doctor for you, but maybe your family can... otherwise I don't know what else can be done."

"And here I thought that's what you wanted anyway," laughed Scruple dryly.

Gargamel shot the boy an appalled look. "Of _course_ not. I said I wanted you out of my hovel, but I'd never want you to _die_... so just tell me where I can find your family, Scruple."

Scruple averted his eyes to the wall, trying to avoid Gargamel's inquisitive face. "I don't _have_ a family," he replied, "only my father, and he hates me."

Gargamel rolled his eyes, incredulous. _Why do children always believe that their family hates them_?

"…Years ago I used to live in a town not far from here, with my mother and father," explained Scruple quietly, shutting his eyes. "I… I really don't remember Mother very well. She was an alchemist and a painter… one night there was this noise during a thunderstorm, and I thought the oak tree on the property had tipped over, but someone had kicked the front door down, actually… there was a lot of screaming, that I _do_ remember, but I was hiding so I didn't see it happen… all I saw were the shadows, and the blood running out from under the doorframe… and the field, in the morning the field had been set on fire... Mother's dead, and Father destroyed all her paintings later."

"But your father's still alive, I assume?" asked Gargamel, a little unsettled at what he was being told. _He's not making this up... that poor child.  
_

With a narrow-eyed, empty glare, Scruple answered, "he says I'm a waste of life and that he wishes I was never born… but hey, I can't complain. I haven't seen him in _ages_, and I don't think I ever will again any time soon. He's just a dumb, drunk fisherman, and as long as I'm away from him, I don't have to worry about being his punching bag the way Mother was. She did everything she could to try and get away from him, but that just drove him crazier, until..."

Having a sneaking suspicion that he knew where Scruple was going with his little trip down memory lane, Gargamel hastily opened his mouth to tell him to stop, but Scruple had _already_ stopped, his head bowed down, the soft sound of heartbroken tears replacing his voice. "Scruple…" Gargamel finally managed to say, although beyond his apprentice's name, he couldn't think of much else. He had heard the gossip, although he had always assumed it was _only_ gossip, that a man had killed his wife in a drunken rage in a nearby town years ago… but that's all it was, just gossip, Gargamel had thought. Never, even in idle curiosity, had he thought to learn about it. It was just two total strangers who were of no meaning to him. _So, Scruple's life has never been a happy one, then... he's just like me... but I always pictured a family, that he had people out there who cared about him. I guess I was wrong.  
_

"I wish I knew where she'd been buried," said Scruple, more to himself than to Gargamel. "Nobody cared when she died, or they all _thought_ nobody cared, anyway... and Father, he just got worse after that, _so_ much worse, because nobody was stepping in to keep him at bay after Mother's death... he spent all our money first, and we never had a lot to begin with so it went fast... and then he was just mad all the time. He was mad that I'd inherited magical abilities, that I didn't want to be a fisherman like him, or a fur-trapper, because he thought magic was a waste of time. He told me that if I wanted to learn magic, it wasn't going to be under _his_ roof, and that if I ever got sent back to him from school, he'd drown me in the river by the grain mill at the edge of town... someday though, when I'm older maybe, I'll be able to get him back for everything he's done. I don't know, though... I don't want to be anything like him."

"...My godfather, Balthazar, he was like that, he thought magic was a waste of time," Gargamel told Scruple, although he wasn't sure why he was bothering to. The last thing Gargamel wanted to do was make it news that he couldn't stand up to a morbidly obese tyrant, but still he continued, anyway. "That lazy ingrate used to make my life a living _hell_ when I was your age, and he'd throw me into a wall if I even _looked_ at him funny… he even tried to kill Azrael once, can you believe that? He was so pretentious and violent, he's _still_ pretentious and violent, and I don't think he cares about anything but himself… people like him just never change. They have to be sitting there in a throne built on the backs of other people, it's the only thing that sort of person really lives for... wait, you don't think I'm going to send you back to your _father_, do you? Is _that_ what this is about?"

"I _know_ that's what you're going to do to me," answered Scruple matter-of-factly, feigning emotionlessness as he tried to brush the frightened tears off his face.

While earlier Gargamel had seriously been considering it, and it would definitely be simpler to just send Scruple away, thinking again, he couldn't bring himself to want to do it anymore, knowing what kind of abuse Scruple was dreading. It was too late to stand up to Balthazar... but not too late to stop history from repeating itself. "Scruple, calm down and stop crying before you hurt yourself more, alright? You're going to make your injuries even worse... nobody's going to do anything bad to you, not while Azrael and I are here." Gargamel halfway wanted to hold Scruple's hand and confess that he was exactly like him, that his own childhood had been full of the same bullying and isolation and loneliness, that he knew how it felt to feel worthless and abandoned... but at the same time the older wizard wasn't even sure how to be honest with _himself_ about that yet.

"I should've listened to everybody earlier on," Scruple sighed, unable to stop crying, clinging to the ragged old blanket with his shivering hands. "They used to tell me that nobody wanted me, that I needed to succeed if I wanted to have a decent life, and I just did exactly what they all _said_ would happen… I became a failure like they all predicted... the fight today was my fault. I used to play stupid pranks when I was still a student, and they were trying to get even with me. I'm _always_ asking for trouble... but I don't want to go back to Father, he'll _kill_ me if I get sent back to him, he told me that I was as good as dead to him already, and..." Scruple was hyperventilating in a blind panic, looking as if he'd seen a ghost. "You can throw me out if you want, but I'll run away if you try to send me back to my father... I'd rather try to find work in another village than go back to him... maybe... maybe if he killed me though, at least everything would be over... he could never do it again, and nobody at school would ever find me again... if he did it quickly, if he didn't drag it out for a long time, it might not be so bad, after all... or I could do it myself, I could jump in the water by the grain mill when no one is looking..."

"Don't say things like that!" Gargamel couldn't stand listening to his apprentice's words anymore. Rather abruptly he stepped forward and hugged Scruple until he went still, holding onto him as if he were afraid to lose him. "_I_ want you," he exclaimed, pushing back Scruple's feathered red bangs gently so he could see his eyes. "You're not a failure, and I'm never going to throw you away… I promise. For as long as you want it to be, this is your home… and Azrael and I are your family. Not exactly a _real_ family, and _definitely_ not a perfect home, but... but something better than what you had before, if you still want to stay here."

It felt horribly out-of-place saying it, and in fact only a day earlier Gargamel probably would never have even _fathomed_ himself genuinely meaning those words. He'd have been disgusted by the sheer _thought_ of it, of seriously telling Scruple that he wanted him to stay. He wasn't even sure why he'd said it. After all, there was little to be gained from keeping Scruple around that Gargamel could see… but when he noticed in stunned silence that Scruple was hugging him back, that the frightened tears glittering in his apprentice's tired eyes had been replaced with a look of trust and adoration, he figured that maybe it was all worth it for that alone. After all, even _bad_ guys needed good companions. Scruple loved him... and even if he'd never admit it, Gargamel was _glad_ that somebody did.

"You'll be a great magician someday," he said as he held Scruple in his arms, stroking his little apprentice's bright red hair reassuringly and trying to hush him into silence until he drifted off to sleep. "...Sometimes I just wish that somebody had told _me_ that when I was your age."


	3. Chapter 3: Freedom

For just about the first time in his life that he could remember, Scruple was happy to be where he was.

The sky above Gargamel's small hovel, sparkling with the silver stars of the approaching evening, was a frozen blue. The snow crunched beneath Scruple's small blue shoes as he slowly wandered the surrounding property, looking for acorns and pinecones. There wasn't a lot that could be done with acorns and pinecones; they couldn't really be eaten or used for a lot, but Scruple liked gathering them, anyway. Gargamel used them for potions and spells, if nothing else.

Scruple wasn't so sure that he hated the winter anymore. As he looked around at the beautiful scenery, he absolutely loved the way that Gargamel's ramshackle old property looked after a snowfall. The bony white branches of the neighboring birch trees glistened with frost and icicles like they'd been decorated in a polish of diamond dust, and a glittering, fluffy white blanket of snow covered the ground like a shining lake. Beneath the evening sky, the snow itself had taken on a crisp turquoise color. The whole world looked enchanted and still on a winter evening, as if time was frozen along with the weather.

He finally had a real home.

From inside the hovel, Gargamel briefly paused beside the frosted window to watch Scruple standing there in the snow. Azrael was trailing along nearby, digging for mice nesting beneath the old hay and clumps of dead shrubbery. Scruple still couldn't run or play with Azrael yet, not in the condition he was in, but Gargamel was glad to see them both outside together again. It had been about a week since the incident with the students from the Wizard Academy, and though the first few days had been uncertain and horribly troublesome, things finally seemed to be going back to normal. Scruple was somewhat back to his old self personality-wise. _Quieter, maybe, _considered Gargamel, _but at least he's not as bad as he was when it all first happened. _For three days after the incident, he'd had a high fever and Gargamel had gone to Balthazar to borrow money for a doctor. "_You should put that little brat out of his misery," _Balthazar had suggested, and as expected, he had loaned Gargamel the money with usurious interest. The doctor had suggested the same thing more indirectly. _"He's bleeding internally, he won't be able to eat for a few days, he's hardly even breathing… even if I help him, there's a good chance he'll die, anyway. Why drag out his suffering like you are?"_

Gargamel had proven them wrong, though. Scruple was recovering. _Finally Balthazar was wrong about something… I wouldn't have let Scruple die, and I would never want to become that type of person, anyway… _

Gargamel's own mother had always wanted him to be as callous and powerful as his godfather, but he'd _never_ be, not if it meant the kind of price such power called for. Only Balthazar's little niece, Denisa, had shown any real hope or encouragement. _"Tell Scruple I hope he gets better soon so I can come visit you guys again, Uncle Gargamel!" _the girl had cheerfully exclaimed in her hollering voice while Gargamel had left Bathazar's enormous castle.

The wooden door to the hovel suddenly slammed shut, breaking the older wizard from his thoughts. He turned around to see Scruple on the ground against a far corner of the nearest wall, holding Azrael in his arms, his knees drawn up and his head buried in the cat's orange fur. "What's going on?" asked Gargamel, tearing himself away from the iron-clad trap he'd been toying with for catching Smurfs beneath the snow. Instead of Scruple's reply, a loud knocking at the door summoned him away. "What do you want?" he snapped gruffly, yanking it open… only to withdraw in stunned surprise when he realized that the visitor was Professor Mordor, the Wizard Academy's headmaster.

The elegant man stepped past Gargamel immediately, seeming to invite _himself_ in, eyeing the surroundings of the hovel with a slight look of disgust. Mordor was a strange sight to see, especially considering how busy he often was. A heavyset wizard with a greying beard, velvet blue robes and dark, calculating eyes, he was at once as imposing as he was wise in appearance. "Gargamel," he greeted curtly with a quick nod of his head.

"Headmaster," replied Gargamel in a solemn monotone, his gaze wavering back to Scruple, whose eyes were shining with dread as he clutched onto Azrael. "What brings you here this evening?"

"I've just come to retrieve Scruple, that's all," explained Mordor, more focused on Gargamel's bizarre Smurf-catching contraption lying on the table than the current situation at hand. "I thought giving him another chance by sending him to you as an apprentice would be of some benefit, but Hendrik and Malachi told me all about the fight he started with them in the forest last week. Even with you here to discipline him, he hasn't managed to keep himself out of trouble… and the Academy has very little tolerance for such chaos. I'm sending him back to his family to prevent this from happening again… I'm not going to let his bad behaviour tarnish the reputation of some of our best students. So come along, Scruple, my boy. I want to get out of here before it gets dark outside."

Scruple shakily stood, swiftly rising to his feet in a rushed panic, but instead of following Mordor's orders, he ran to Gargamel. "_Please_ don't send me back to my father," he pleaded, clinging onto Gargamel's black robes, only to withdraw with a pained cry due to his broken bones.

Mordor didn't bother to hold back an exasperated sigh. "You're making me lose my patience," he barked out loudly, tapping one foot in annoyance on the hovel's cold floor.

Gargamel frowned, thinking back to the incident of the prior week, anger gripping him. "Now, wait just a minute Mordor," he exclaimed, not bothering with the usual formalities. "I don't know what those students told you, but Scruple wasn't responsible for that fight! I sent him into the forest that day to collect firewood for me, and they found him and went after him, and…"

"Silence!" spat Mordor icily, making Gargamel jump at the sudden change of manners. "You were _always_ a bad apple too, Gargamel. That's why I expelled you. Do you really expect me to take a dropout delinquent's word over that of Malachi Levay, the son of one of our Academy's most respected graduates? Or Hendrik Newton? His mother is one of the most powerful witches the world over!" When Mordor's eyes fell on Scruple, all he saw was a pale and thin little peasant with narrow shoulders and a mop of red hair. Compared to esteemed magicians who sent their children to the Wizard Academy, Scruple might as well not have even existed at all.

"I understand," said Gargamel bitterly, glaring at Mordor. "…Your Academy is _full_ of corruption, it _always_ was, that's no secret. It's about prestige, not sorcery, but… but Scruple's _my_ apprentice. I'm not just going to turn him back over to you so you can cover up a scandal."

A hushed, eerie silence had fallen upon the hovel, so quiet that the mice in the walls could be heard skittering about with their tiny feet. Mordor seemed so much more menacing all of a sudden, not just menacing but also weirdly desperate. _One of the parents of those students probably paid him to hush this up_, Gargamel thought to himself in disappointment. _…I could make things easier for myself if I just turned Scruple over to him now. _Instead of acting on his thoughts, he put his arm protectively over Scruple's shoulders, Azrael at his side, the mangy cat's claws and fangs gleaming in the warm firelight. "Scruple doesn't want to go back to his father," Gargamel told Mordor sternly, "so I'm not going to force him. Now, get out of my house and stay off my property."

Mordor paused for a minute, some vague flicker of emotion in his eyes, but he abruptly held out his wooden wand in one quick flash, pointing it at Gargamel with a threatening glint in his expression. "It's not up for debate, Gargamel," he declared with a sudden step forward. "I could have you _arrested_ for this little stunt of yours!"

This set Scruple off at once. "Go away!" he ordered, stepping forward with glaring, dark-ringed eyes at Mordor. "If you arrest him, you're going to pay for it!"

Mordor smiled disarmingly, stooping down until he was at Scruple's height. "I'm afraid I can't do that," he said, reaching out to try and grab the child's hand. "Now, you're overreacting to this quite a lot, don't you think? Not everybody is cut out to be a sorcerer, and you'll be better off in a more useful position, maybe hog-farming or chimney-sweeping or something more… _appropriate_ to your background." Scruple tried to pull away from him, but his injuries from the previous week were weighing him down, making it impossible.

Gargamel interrupted, surprised to find that his voice was completely steady, even under the threat of being detained. "He's my apprentice, and if he wants to stay here, he can," he insisted, crossing his arms, his words edged with steel. "I'm not going to ship him off to some abusive relative just to do you the favour of keeping the Academy's sterling reputation intact… you're trespassing, and I want you to get out of my house… I'm sure _King Gerard_ might be interested to know that such a renowned headmaster like yourself would readily put an injured child in peril just to protect a gang of rich bullies."

Mordor made a disparaging noise, shaking his head and wrapping his fist around Scruple's dark red cloak to drag him from the house, but Scruple threw him a warning, sinister glance and Mordor froze, raising a suspicious eyebrow when he noticed that Scruple had one bruised eye covered partially by his bright red bangs of hair. "From what I was told, Malachi and the others just played a practical joke on him," the headmaster pointed out, puzzled. "Why is he shaking like that?"

"If you call almost _beating someone to death_ a 'practical joke', I suppose," muttered Gargamel under his breath. "You're just lucky they _didn't_ kill him, because that would have been a lot more difficult to sweep under the carpet… now, _get out of here_."

Mordor could feel something subtle building up in the air, a dry, crackling energy that seemed to be creeping up and filling the room. The gray hair on his face felt drenched with sweat and he was breathing heavily, feeling as though he were trapped in a summer heatwave. He looked down at Scruple, only to recoil in horror. Gargamel's apprentice was staring straight at him with focused, fixed eyes, like he was in a sort of wild trance.

Gargamel himself had noticed this too, his expression falling into startled amazement as he tried to consider what was going on. "Mordor, don't be a fool," he blurted out, catching the old headmaster's attention. "Get out of here before…"

Scruple swiftly turned towards Mordor, his eyes still fixed and unblinking, but a blatant hostility was now there to drive his actions. Mordor only had time to take an uneasy step back when his beard and cloak caught fire. The headmaster made an odd noise, a sort of muffled, bewildered cry, but Scruple didn't seem fazed by this at all, not even when the thick smell of fried fabric swirled around the room. He only continued to stare blankly as Mordor took off running from the hovel, crazily beating out the last of the curled golden flames that had been licking his clothing. Scruple hadn't hurt the man, but Mordor looked terrified out of his wits.

_He's going to burn up this whole place, _thought Gargamel in worry, noticing that the snow on the ground outside seemed to be turning clear and pasty, melting away as if springtime had arrived too early. "Scruple, stop!" he finally ordered, his voice shattering the silence.

Scruple staggered on his feet and put his hands up to his face, disoriented. A terrified confusion had filled his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said as he gazed out the window to watch the snow, which had pooled into a clear, glazed sheet of ice from the sudden surge of heat in the air. "I'm sorry I'm so much trouble… now you can see why my father wants me _dead_. He was scared of my mother and I… and he _envied_ my mother, too."

"She must have been a fire mage," mused Gargamel slowly, crossing the room and standing in front of Scruple with a long look of concern. "I've heard about such things before, but… Scruple, you told me last week when I'd asked you where your family is, that when your mother was killed there was a field on fire… Scruple, did _you_ do that?"

Scruple kept his head down, paling even further than he already was. "…He killed my mother," he explained simply. "I didn't _know_ what I was doing. I just wanted him to pay for it."

"…I see," replied Gargamel, shutting and locking the door to the hovel, leaning against the wood for a moment, overtaken by his own memories. _There was a girl at the Wizard Academy when I was still a student there, she was my… she hardly knew I _existed_, but sometimes I came close to asking her… she could start fires. The classroom books, the teacher's cape, her own shoes even, every time she got upset or bored, things around her would catch fire, and… and they expelled her around the same time they expelled me, because she was using her powers for the Black Arts… she had long hair, and it was red like Scruple's… _he held his breath, shutting his eyes tightly and wondering for one disturbing second if the little girl he'd had some dumb crush on years ago had been Scruple's mother.

He was surprised when he felt Scruple reaching out and leading him from the door back to the kitchen table. "Don't worry about the field, Gargy," he said with a nervous laugh, going back to using the older wizard's silly nickname. "It was a long time ago. I was eight years old then, but times change. I hardly ever use my magic anymore, not like that, anyway." Filling one of the iron pots on the stove with water, he stared straight at it and immediately a flicker of fire began to creep up along the sides. "See, it's useful sometimes, too… when I'm able to stop it."

Gargamel watched Scruple thoughtfully but said nothing. _It's dangerous, that power… they used to execute people for it, even children, decades ago. Scruple's just a child, and children can never control magic as well as they think… what if he had set Mordor's _face_ on fire? What if he had _killed_ him? _At the same time, Gargamel began to consider what Scruple's abilities could be good for in terms of finally catching the Smurfs. _He could burn down their village, or… or we could round up six of them in one place, and he could melt them into gold just by _staring_ at them…_

With a sudden wave of his hand, Scruple put out the flames beneath the pot. He tried to lift it and carry it to the table, but suddenly he winced in pain, holding his hand against his ribs as he leaned towards the wall to keep from falling. "Just leave it," Gargamel told him, bringing the pot to the table himself. "I'll make some tea. It's getting late."

As he swept Scruple up into his arms and set him down gently on the braided rug beside the fireplace next to Azrael, Gargamel couldn't stop dwelling on it… that he was sure he'd known Scruple's mother a long time ago. When he looked at his apprentice's large dark eyes and red hair, he knew he'd seen it all before with the girl who had gone briefly to school with him. _Maybe that's why she married Scruple's father, then… she'd been expelled from school, she practiced the Black Arts, she'd never be able to find paying work to support herself… did she tell Scruple's father about her magic before she married him? _

Scruple reached out to stroke Azrael's orange fur. "Mordor's going to put two and two together," he said to the cat, who only nudged the boy's pale hand in a silent reply. "He's going to know that I set the field on fire when Mother was killed, and he's going to know what I did to him tonight."

_Mordor is corrupt, _Gargamel thought to himself as he watched the tea steeping in the boiled water, the aromatic steam curling up towards the rafters above. _I should turn that two-faced liar into a _rat_ for what he's letting those other students get away with. I wonder… if Scruple's mother had survived, if she had taken him with her and ran away from her husband before he killed her… no, she wouldn't have even _remembered_ me. _He felt regretful about that. He knew what it felt like to be expelled after all, to be treated like a freak, to be desperate for something better.

Shoving items aside on his shelf of potions, Gargamel picked up the small cobalt-blue glass jar the doctor had given him for Scruple. _Willow bark and catnip… my guess is Azrael would love this stuff a _lot_ more than Scruple will. _"You know," he pointed out as he poured the tea, "you're wrong about the fires being trouble. As long as you can control it, those fires could be the one thing that will keep Mordor from sending you back to your father… and the one thing you'll have to defend yourself if you _do_ get sent back."

"…It's bad," replied Scruple, thinking back to some of the times his magic _hadn't_ worked out so well for him. There was the day his father had first caught him for example, only two weeks after the death of his mother. He was staring at a silver tray sitting there next to his father's lap, a tray with the skeletal remnants of an expensive chicken dinner on it which couldn't really be afforded on their dwindling income. _"He's going to spend all the money and we'll wind up in the poorhouse," _Scruple had been considering at the time with a growing sense of worry. His father had been slouched over drunkenly, muttering about a recent bar fight he'd gotten into, when suddenly he'd smelled the smoke wafting off the old leftover food. Scruple had been staring in frustration at the grotesque old chicken bones. They did not so much burst into flames as they'd fried apart, crackling and charring black. Scruple's father had shaken his hands over the tray to clear the smoke away, but the tray itself flipped over, spilling loose pieces of ash and burning chicken bones onto the carpet before hitting the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the silver. Scruple had immediately hurried to gather up the mess, but his father had knocked him across the floor with a swift kick to his side, leaving him lying there coughing with the ashes from the burnt food on his hands. _"I shoulda known, ya little monster!" _the drunken man had hissed out in a swirl of fury, his teeth clenched, his face red. _"Ya ain't normal, ya're a mistake, ya're one o' them evil little druid hellspawns, just like yer mother! …Well, ain't ya gonna do somethin', or ya just gonna blackmail like yer mother used to do? Well, DO SOMETHIN' goddammit, ya little failure!"_

He was too young to do anything back then. He hadn't even _meant_ to set the tray on fire… all he knew was that he didn't want to be like his father, killing other people just to help himself. _"I'm sorry_," he'd tried to tell his father, but all his father had replied with was, _"Sorry, are ya? Why don't ya burn _yerself_ up, if ya're so sorry? It'd save me the trouble… yer mother never got that through her thick head, all the trouble ya were causin' or the expense of keepin' ya 'ere with us…" _

"Your mother never killed anybody with her magic, did she?" asked Gargamel curiously.

"No…" said Scruple, "she used to say that using evil magic for good purposes wasn't truly evil, and that the fires she was setting were only supposed to _scare_ Father, not kill anyone."

Gargamel pondered over this, rather repulsed at the thought of this unknown, hateful man. "He killed your mother just over _that_?"

Scruple shook his head as he stood up to carry his cup back to the table. "Oh no, I'm sure there were _lots_ of other reasons, the money and the booze and the gambling and all, but he was _never_ happy, anyway. The only time I ever really saw him happy when he wasn't drunk was… well, once he was at the edge of the forest at the end of the field by the house, and he saw this bright green lizard on the ground… he caught it, he gave it to me to keep, and I wanted to know how he did it, so he showed me how to sneak up on them and how to trap them without killing them, and how to release them back into the forest…" With a somewhat wistful look, Scruple added, "I think he was hoping I wouldn't have any magic because he was jealous, but he never knew that _everybody_ is magic, even non-magic people… I've never seen _anybody _who could catch lizards as well as he could, and at the time, it seemed like magic to me. I mean, I never thought any _less _of him because he wasn't magic, not until he killed my mother… I'm going to be like him no matter what I want, anyway. I don't think I've done many good things in my life… I like living here, and I'm really grateful for everything you've given me, but… why are you helping me? I have nothing to give you in return, nothing but problems… you stood up for me against Mordor, and he was threatening to have you arrested."

Gargamel laughed with a joking smile. "Give me some credit, Scruple. Even someone as evil as _I _am wouldn't send you back to where you came from… I don't know why I'm helping you… I'm not going to lie, you annoy me a great deal sometimes, and I don't have the money to be keeping you here. I'm not so sure I ever wanted an apprentice... but something will come out of it, I'm sure."

Scruple looked rather confused by this, and then all of a sudden, much to Gargamel's surprise, he seemed very uneasy, and a strange wave of hurt and betrayal had filled the boy's eyes. "There were rumours at the Academy," he exclaimed, "rumours that some wizards and alchemists sell their apprentices to dark sorcerers and necromancers… they kill them for rituals and dark spells, and…"

"_Scruple_!" Gargamel blurted out in disbelief, taken aback. "You don't honestly think that I would ever… wizards don't sell their apprentices! It's forbidden, and any wizard who did would be exiled to the top of the mountains. Those rumours were there when I was in school too, but they were just made-up stories to scare younger students. Lending your soul to a wizard is the usual price of apprenticeship, but I decided already when you were first sent to me that I wasn't going to make you go through with that... you don't trust _anyone_, do you? …Well, I suppose that's how you've survived over the years… come here for a minute."

Scruple did as he was told, trembling warily as he stepped closer. _Father used to do that all the time, even when Mother was still alive! He'd lie to me and say that he cared about me, and then he'd leave me in the forest over and over again during his hunting trips… but Mother always came and found me. That's what people do, they lie! _Scruple had been lied to many times. After his mother had been killed, when the money was all gone, his father was desperate… he had tried to sell Scruple two times, first as a servant to a wealthy family of merchants who owned a large textiles mill and wanted cheap labour, and then to a vain and elderly witch whose grim spell of immortality had called for the still-beating heart of a magical being to restore her youth. Scruple had evaded both these fates narrowly, much to his father's chagrin. People _everywhere_ were shallow and cruel, it seemed. Nevertheless, Scruple thought that Gargamel at least _sounded_ sincere about not wanting to hurt him. Words though, he'd learned in his brief but hectic life, could be very deceiving.

Gargamel sighed, trying to think of where to begin. "If you really want to know why I decided I wanted to keep you here, why I'm not giving you back to Mordor… it's because I was a lot like you once," he explained hesitantly, sinking back against his wicker rocking chair. "You've met Balthazar, he's a vicious man and he's sadistic too, as I'm sure you've noticed… when I was your age, I was sent to his castle over the summer. I don't know, maybe my family thought some of his ambition would leave an impression on me or something, but all he ever did was make things worse. He used to do all sorts of things that _still_ make me loathe him more than life itself."

"Even to his own _godson_?" asked Scruple, but he wasn't so sure he wanted to know. There was something weird about Gargamel, something Scruple had never seen in him before. _I don't know a lot about ol' Gargy's family, only that overbearing busybody mother of his. He always tries to keep me away from Balthazar. Even when he sent me to his castle to steal Balthazar's gold-making book, he went along with me in that ridiculous old lady disguise instead of letting me go alone.  
_

"_Especially_ his own godson," answered Gargamel with a shudder. "You've seen how he talks about Denisa behind _her_ back, and she's his own blood-related niece… it got easier over time for me to make up excuses for all the cuts and the bruises, and eventually everybody just stopped questioning it. Balthazar's dungeon, he would leave me down there for days on end too because he didn't want me interfering with his work… I can still hear his voice now, _Gargamel you ugly little pest, I told you to stay away from my spellbooks! _Azrael wasn't with me in the summers then either, so I had no one to talk to… but I'd steal charcoal from Balthazar, and I'd draw pictures on the walls of the dungeon when he wasn't looking... and he threatened that I would pay for it if I ever defaced any part of his castle."

"That's... that's _horrible_," said Scruple in almost a whisper, having trouble finding his own voice, too distracted by the sympathy he had for Gargamel, picturing what a whole summer spent in isolation would have been like. "...He never caught you?"

"…Once, this one time in July he caught me, when I was twelve years old," replied Gargamel. It went against every aspect of his own cold personality, but to his astonishment he was actually _relieved_ to be telling it all to Scruple. "I was drawing a raven on the walls, and I didn't even see Balthazar creeping up behind me, but he hit me on the side of the head with something and I thought he'd spilled water on me, but it was blood… and then he started dragging me to the furthest room in the dungeon, and he left for a minute so I was thinking maybe that was the end of it… but it _wasn't_." Gargamel turned his head to the window to watch the snow outside, not wanting his apprentice to notice the heavy tears that were building in his eyes. "…When I woke up, he had broken my hands and put a blinding curse on me so I couldn't see anything until I left his castle a month later, a 'lesson' he said, so I wouldn't draw on the walls anymore… the last thing I remember about it before I went blind were his eyes, and I'll _never_ forget that. He was _proud_ of what he had done, I could see it in his eyes, and I think in some way he probably _still_ is… it wasn't the last time, though. I used to get beaten up by other students, the same as you were last week, near the Wizard Academy when I went there, Scruple… and around the same time that I was expelled, there was another student in school with me, a girl who was just like _you_. Her name was Hollis Incendier, and she could start fires too, but… everybody just called her Holly. Scruple… I hope you'll understand now why I'm helping you, and that there's no cruel or backstabbing purpose behind it. I see myself in you, but I don't _want_ you to be like me."

Scruple was completely speechless, frozen in shock. He had never known anyone to have gone through such similar things as himself, but Gargamel, who had a reputation for being the most oblivious, nasty and unhinged magician on earth, had understood his pain all along. _What if Balthazar had never mistreated him? What if he hadn't been expelled from school or beaten up by other students? Would he be so fixated on turning Smurfs into gold and getting so much power and money otherwise? _Scruple himself was no stranger to greed and selfishness. He, like Gargamel, wielded petty greed as a weapon of brief euphoria and protection. He'd stolen the magic toy sack of St. Nicholas after all, not to mention the magic wand of Brenda, the little witch girl who had been so kind and nice to him… but back then he had thought nobody cared about him, and that if he let his guard down, he'd fall back into the trap of having his heart broken by those who claimed to love him. So, he was evil, bratty, obnoxious and downright rotten Scruple, the perfect veil of false indifference and malice, the perfect intimidation to keep others away from him so he could be left alone. In spite of all of this, Gargamel of all people still liked him. He wasn't even sure how to thank him properly. Gargamel had cared for him when he was injured, taken him into his home and treated him like a member of his own family, all in the face of considering him unbearably annoying and inconvenient for the most part.

Scruple did the only thing he could think of to do. "I _would_ want to be like you," he said as he affectionately hugged the older wizard, much to Gargamel's bewilderment. "You saved my life. It would take the most powerful wizard in the world to do what you've done for me. I'm sorry I thought the worst of you earlier... and I'm sorry about what Balthazar did to you... you saved my life even though you had to borrow money from Balthazar and stand up to Mordor to do it... that's the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me."

Gargamel looked down at Scruple with a bit of an irritated look on his face. "Well, what do you know, I did something good after all," he replied with an exasperated grin, sardonic as usual. "When I told you this was your home now, I _meant_ it. I'm not going to give you away or sell you or send you back to Mordor or anything like that. You can trust me, and you know I have nothing to gain anyway from putting you in danger." _What does it take, _the older wizard wondered to himself in horror, _for a child Scruple's age to think the worst of everyone, even people trying to help him? There's still so much I don't know about him, but the way he behaves, his father must have been horribly cruel... and thinking back on it, what reason have I ever given for Scruple to trust me? There was that time I sent him down into a tar pit to mix potions, and I left him there to save my own neck, and those times I kicked him out of the hovel so he had to live with that overgrown lummox Bigmouth... and I sent him off to get firewood last week near the Wizard Academy, and that's where those students beat him up. It's no wonder he's always jumping to the worst conclusions.  
_

For a long time, with only the sound of the breeze and the sight of the sparkling snowfall outside, Gargamel said nothing, thinking things over to himself in his own mind. Scruple was right in what he'd told Azrael, that Mordor would find out what he was... and that he would probably be back to retrieve him later. _That's the way life goes, _considered Gargamel. _The world can be a dangerous place, especially when you have nobody there to look out for you._ _Mordor's going to take him away... either back to his father, or to the Academy where he can exploit his magic now that he knows what Scruple's capable of. I'm not a good guardian, in any case... I have no job, no money, and my own magic is dark and evil.  
_

He looked back down at Scruple again. The boy had fallen asleep, the medicine he'd been given finally taking effect, but he was crying softly, holding onto Gargamel's hand in terror. He looked like he was having a horrible dream, shivering in pain from his injuries. Gargamel carefully picked him up, trying to think of what could be done... and then he remembered what he'd threatened Mordor with. _"I'm sure King Gerard might be interested to know that such a renowned headmaster like yourself would readily put an injured child in peril just to protect a gang of rich bullies."_

When he brushed back Scruple's red hair, whispering reassurances, it was somehow enough to get him to gradually stop crying, and finally he looked more peaceful than Gargamel had seen him in a long time. Gargamel didn't have a lot of money, he didn't have a big house, and he wasn't what anybody would ever describe as a nice or friendly person... but he wouldn't go back and change his decision to take in Scruple, not even if he were given the option to turn back time and do things over again.

As he left Scruple sleeping, lying on the braided rug with Azrael resting right beside him, Gargamel packed away what food there was left in the hovel's cupboards, some bread and clover honey in a clear bottle, wrapping it in a burlap satchel. "Tomorrow morning," he said aloud, even though he was only really talking to himself, "the three of us are going into town. It's time somebody told King Gerard about what's happened." He wasn't so sure the King would agree to see him. King Gerard wasn't hateful towards Gargamel and had never really met Scruple, but there was a definite possibility that it wouldn't go over too well. _Still_, thought Gargamel as he trudged off to his old straw mattress to get some sleep himself, _King Gerard isn't ruthless like Balthazar, and he's not corrupt like Mordor... it's worth a try._


End file.
